BOOK REVIEW by Lydia Hutchinson
BIBILLA –
KNOTTED LACE FLOWERS
© ELENA DICKSON 2013
Sally Milner Publishing
ISBN 9781863514507 Paperback
This is Elena’s third book on Knotted Lace, this time specialising in flowers both garden and Australian. After many years of teaching basic knotted needle lace in the traditional Mediterranean style, the flowers took many hours of experimenting to get the correct threads to achieve the original designs that have been produced for this book. Elena uses the double knot in making the flowers and this produces nice firm stitches. She lists various threads that can be used successfully, as well as showing the use of a filament to give more stability to the edges. Her diagrams are clear and well drawn, and once you have mastered the knot correctly and have even loops, you would be able to tackle the flowers. It is advisable to work the basic Five-petal flower first, so that you understand how the petals and leaves are constructed and then finishing off with the stamens and assembly of the flowers. Elena has not worked traditional Oya or Turkish flowers but has taken common garden flowers such as cistus ‘Silver Pink’, daffodil, clematis, fushia, white daisy and carnation. In her Australian wildflower collection she has included woolly tea tree, royal bluebell, dwarf buttercup, flannel flower, cooktown orchid and fringe-lily. At the back of the book there is a picture gallery of her work with ideas to use the flowers.
This book has 152 pages and is easy to follow. I have worked all of the flowers and found the double knot very stable to use for the flowers and leaves.